Everytime I talk to someone in the insurance department, I tell them the "Harsh Breaking" part of the discount program is WAY TOO SENSITIVE!!! I get the same response, "We will report it". Apparently the information goes to an unmonitored mailbox, because it never changes. Lately, the software has been going crazy. One day I will have 79 harsh breaking incidents, and the next day I will have the normally recorded number. I could understand if there was a tool that measured acceleration, or even tracked speed against what a GPS program might say the speed for a segment of highway is, but the "Harsh Breaking" should not even be a category.
Living in Texas, over 90% of the time if I press my break pedal too hard, it is to avoid a collision with someone that stops suddenly, pulls in front of me and steps on their breaks, or the light turns yellow and I am faced with the decision of possibly allowing myself to be t-boned. I generally do the speed limit, or something nominal like 2 or 3 mph over. I drive a smaller half-ton truck, a Frontier. In Texas where two thirds of the vehicles on the road are full-sized trucks, and people are always making sure they will be the first car at the scene of the accident by driving way too fast, I do have to get on the brakes more than I like sometimes.
Some, actually most situations where firm breaking is required, is something that can seldom be predicted. The message I am getting from USAA, by the fact my repeated requests to adjust the parameter for Harshing Braking have been ignored, is to avoid applying the breaks any more than their program will allow and just suffer the consequences. USAA is condoning unsafe driving habits by not addressing this problem with SafePilot.
